Cannes Film Festival 2012

Reel Talk: Cannes Heat

The Cannes Film Festival began this week. Generally speaking, this is a festival more for film fans who enjoy a bit of post-viewing dissection over an organic flat white, rather than your enthusiast of things exploding expensively. Cannes tends to get critics breaking out their biggest adjectives to praise films that are depressing and subtitled and typically about someone contemplating abortion while staring out of a shack window or riding across eastern Europe on a mule (the mule somehow being a metaphor for political unrest).

Whatever wins the Best In Show prize, or Palme D’Or, will eventually be released in cinemas to much fanfare and usually very little audience. But it does turn up the occasional hit, such as last year’s The Artist. So far this year, Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom is getting a good reaction (I found it almost aggressively twee, but if you like Anderson’s aesthetic then you should enjoy it). There’s also excitement for Cosmopolis,which makes the unlikely match-up of serial weirdo David Cronenberg and teenage scream-target Robert Pattinson. Pattinson’s Twilight co-star Kristen Stewart will be in an adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. Possibly most exciting is Killing Them Softly, which reunites Brad Pitt with Andrew Dominik, director of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, for a story about an ‘enforcer’ sent to exact justice on some petty criminals who knock off a mob poker game. No trailer for that one yet, just a brief clip. Call me mainstream, but my anticipation is much higher for this than the latest Abbas Kiarostami…

Jobs for the BoysDevelopments on two Steve Jobs biopics this week. One, there was a first look at Ashton Kutcher as the Apple mastermind in Joshua Michael Stern’s Jobs. Yes, you would be forgiven for thinking that just looks like a photo of Ashton Kutcher in a polo neck. Because that’s what it is. The bigger development is that Aaron Sorkin has signed on to write a rival Jobs biopic. Based on Walter Isaacson’s biography, this adaptation has been trying to secure Sorkin since November. Given the West Wing creator has already won an Oscar for a similar tale of a young technological whizz becoming one of the most powerful men in the world, that one being The Social Network, you can see why. Kutcher’s project will almost certainly be seen first, but Sorkin’s is surely the more enticing.

Return to Sin CitySin City, a stylish assemblage of strippers, thugs and cartoon violence, was a big success in 2005. A sequel was immediately discussed and a short seven years later it’s finally going to happen. A Dame To Kill For, again based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller, goes into production shortly for a 2013 release. It’s promised that a number of original cast members will return to work with director Robert Rodriguez, with Mickey Rourke (as sensitive lump Marv) and Jessica Alba (as sweet stripper Nancy) already confirmed. The film will be released in October 2013 and, because you’re nobody without an extra dimension, will be in 3D.

Counting the Minutes To…The Amazing Spider-ManThis trailer might call it “the year’s most anticipated movie” but The Amazing Spider-Man, a reboot of the Spider-Man series just five years after Tobey Maguire hung up his web-shooters, has been struggling to get out of the shadow of The Avengers Assemble, The Dark Knight Rises and Prometheus. So it’s wanged a massive four-minute trailer online, which fortunately looks very, very promising. The action looks strong, the scale looks enormous and Andrew Garfield appears to have nailed Peter Parker’s mix of sarcasm and heroism. Have a look for yourself.

If You Watch One Film This Week, Make It...Anchorman

Presumably you’ve seen this, haven’t you? Haven’t you? What have you been doing? This Will Ferrell comedy about '70s newsreaders is getting a sequel next year and it’s probably the funniest film he’s ever made. You will be quoting it for months afterwards. Go and watch it immediately. Or on Sunday. Your choice. (BBC1, Sunday, 11.10pm)